A desktop made of Air

[Bart] managed to get his hands on a Macbook Air for free. The catch was that the monitor hinge was broken and the laptop wasn’t in too great of a condition. Rather than scrapping it or using it as a cake cutter, he decided to turn it into a keyboard PC. By removing the internals he was able to fit all of the components with minimal modification. [Bart] has added a few things to make it a functional desktop, such as integrating a USB hub under the the keyboard and fitted the keyboard with a Magic Trackpad. As with any great hack, the project is still in progress, and we can’t wait to see the final touches as it comes together.

1. Encase the whole thing in acrylic.
2. Make a mineral oil proof port extension plate. (The damned stuff is awesome for submersion cooling, but will seep down your wires and cables)
3. Add a low power (DC) compact fishtank pump.
4. Remove the fan and cover, but not the sink.
5. Place input and output of pump accordingly.
6. Fill with mineral oil.
7. ???
8. Profit!

Looks a little rough sure, but it’s a bit silly to criticize a work in progress someone publishes to the web. I’m not sure we will see a resurgence of “keyboard computers”, because the really never went any where, but we call them netbooks or laptops. For a desktop, an all contained int the monitor with a separate keyboard make the most sense. Especially if a secure wireless keyboards are available

“How is it that something like this makes it to Gizmodo 3 days before Hack-a-Day?”

LOL. Yea, I knew when I saw this on ModMyI this morning before I submitted it here that this was probably old, but I hadn’t seen it before, so I figured I’d let them know about it, and then let them decide to post it or not. I am not an apple fanboy either(the only iProduct I own is an old iPhone 2G I built for free from 2 other broken phones), but this project looked pretty sweet… :D

^Yea, I was just setting up one of these new all-in-one Macs with the wireless keyboard and mouse, and the keyboard actually felt like an old-school Apple IIc keyboard! Talk about going back to basics…

I think i can safely say this for everyone:
^(Srek) WHOOSH
That picture isn’t the hack, that is what it looks like inside the new case.
Example of the cover(s). The keyboard and magic trackpad are the top.
The position can also be switched which i found really sweet.

The numerous mods that will be done to it, as well as additional hardware added, such as a USB hub, all make it.
Go to the site. They are soldering stuff in to it Soldering an already existent board makes it hacking, regardless of how simple it was. It is against the use-cases that the device was built for. (more-so in the case of Apple, they are completely against others opening their stuff these days)